Tuesday, 26 January 2016

Piemontesi - Mozart, 25 January 2016

Wigmore Hall

Fantasia in D minor, KV 397/385g

Piano Sonata in D major, KV
284/205b

Rondo in A minor, KV 511

Piano Sonata in A major, KV
331/300i

Francesco Piemontesi (piano)

Mozart will be 260 on 27
January. In seven days surrounding that birthday, I shall be attending no fewer
than five concerts devoted to or including his music, both in London and in
Salzburg. This Wigmore Hall recital from Francesco Piemontesi was the first; I
shall end with another pianist, Radu Lupu, playing two of Mozart’s piano concertos.
It was certainly an excellent beginning. There is, I think, nothing more
difficult than to give an all-Mozart recital. Ten years ago, as part of a
series of events I organised in Cambridge to commemorate the composer’s 250th
birthday, I gave such a recital, having returned to performing Mozart in public
after burning my fingers badly (albeit metaphorically!) as a teenager and
swearing I should never do so again. I was delighted to have done so –
reasonably, I thought, at the time – but I can think of no sterner task I have
set myself and doubt that I shall ever do so again.

Piemontesi most certainly
should; indeed, as part of the Wigmore Hall’s ‘Mozart Odyssey’, he will do so
again here as soon as 13 July. This programme, intelligently constructed, and
equally intelligently performed, satisfied from beginning to end. D minor led
to D major, Don Giovanni-like in the
first half, and A minor led to its tonic major in the second. The D minor
Fantasia makes for a splendid opening piece. (I say that not only because I
chose it to open that aforementioned Cambridge recital!) Far too often today,
pianists seem inhibited in playing Mozart on modern pianos. The results are
rarely as dreadful as so-called ‘historically-informed’ performances by modern
orchestras, to which the only reasonable response can be: ‘What on earth is the
point of trying to make modern instruments sound like their ancient
counterparts? You will not entirely succeed, and if that is what you want, why
not use the latter in the first place?’ The problem is inhibition rather than
greyness and downright grotesquerie; at best, we end up with prettified,
Meissen china, Mozart, drained of its passion. Such was not the case here, for
Piemontesi gave a full-bloodedly Romantic performance. Anyone who doubts Mozart’s
Romanticism doubts Mozart, or does not know him at all. Quite rightly, full use
was made of the sustaining pedal, not least at the very opening, Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata seemingly only a stone’s
throw away. Moreover the element of performance, perhaps recalling the composer’s
improvisatory or quasi-improvisatory practice was equally apparent; it was not
difficult at all to imagine the composer himself having played like this at the
keyboard. Like an operatic scena, this rumbled, raged, above all sang. So much
for Joseph Kerman’s assertion, oft-quoted thereafter, that it is ‘almost
impossible to play Mozart emotionally on a modern piano without sounding vulgar’.
To be fair, he said ‘almost’, but even so. Here, like the Overture to Don Giovanni, and with a similarly
abrupt conclusion to the concert ending to that (the first piece I conducted,
as it happens), we experienced the wonder of this quite un-Beethovenian yet nevertheless - as E.T.A. Hoffmann
understood - quintessentially Romantic journey from darkness to light.

Mozart’s piano sonatas remain
absurdly underestimated by many. The old idea of them as ‘teaching pieces’ –
yes, of course, they work wonders as teaching pieces, but that is a beginning,
not an end – has yet to be eradicated. They perhaps give up their secrets less
readily than the concertos, but many of us have learned most of what we fancy
we know by playing the solo piano works of Bach and Mozart. The so-called ‘Dürnitz
Sonata’ followed, in a reading with which I really could not find fault at all.
(Not, I hasten to add, that I was trying to do so!) The Allegro was crisp, commanding, at times orchestral – although Piemontesi
knew very well the difference between a piano suggesting an orchestra and an
orchestra itself. Often, as here, the former can accomplish deeds that the
latter cannot. He knew when to yield, too, at least as important, whilst
ultimately retaining a forward-looking (or forward-hearing) impetus; without
that, sonata form is nothing, a formula rather than a form. The Rondeau en Polonaise paid its homage, as
had the Fantasia, to earlier keyboard music; I thought, not least following the
Aurora Orchestra’s recent concert with John Butt, of the Bach sons. Yet there was
no doubt whose operatic voice was taking flight here too. In the finale,
Piemontesi showed a proper understanding of Classical variation form, all too
often – like these sonatas themselves – underestimated, as if the Diabelli Variations and the Goldbergs were the only possibilities
here. One needs an intimate acquaintance, emotional yet subtle, stylistically
sensitive yet vividly performative, to attend to the demands of
characterisation and the greater whole. This performance satisfied on all those
counts.

At first I was slightly
nonplussed by Piemontesi’s way with the great A minor Rondo. (Is it the
composer’s single greatest work for solo piano? At the very least, there is
nothing beyond it.) Less overtly Romantic than the performance of the Fantasia
though it might have been, it actually proved all the more forward-looking.
That is partly a matter of the material and Mozart’s chromatic, contrapuntal development
of it. But a relatively – and I stress relatively – ‘objective’ approach,
without taking that to extremes, was able to point the way to its
constructivism, its proximity to the Schoenberg of the 1920s. It is not that
the performance was somehow ‘unemotional’, but that it made one listen to
process, to craft, and permitted the highly volatile emotional material to
speak for itself.

The A major Sonata, KV 331, 300i, followed. Without underlining the
fact, appearing again to let the music simply to ‘speak’, Piemontesi allowed
one to appreciate the unusual qualities of a work that has not a single movement
in sonata form, and which yet nevertheless feels very much as a sonata ‘should’.
Again, the first movement variations displayed a fine balance between
individual characterisation and longer-term planning. One almost did not notice
the distinction of phrasing and touch – here, as elsewhere – because the
pianist felt no need to draw attention to himself; however, on reflection, one
knew that much had been done. The second movement Minuet and Trio were taken
quite fast, but they did not sound unduly so; indeed, the Trio flowed like oil,
to employ Mozart’s celebrated dictum. Piemontesi again showed, in the Rondo alla Turca, what the piano can
actually accomplish better than an orchestra, whilst suggesting not only
orchestral colours but also the spirit of an older instrument. We do not need a
‘percussion stop’, interesting though it might be occasionally to hear one; we
need an intelligent performance, willing to use the means at our modern
disposal.